A Book Report On Unbroken By Louis Zamperini

Unbroken taught me so much about World War II, POW camps, and the lives and struggles of those living throughout it. I learned about the horrific conditions of the Japanese POW camps the most. Louis Zamperini spent much of the book in various camps, tortured, starved, and sick. The conditions of the Japanese camps were a stark contrast to those of the American camps. In the Japanese camps, prisoners were treated like vermin. They were given very little food, and the food they were given was usually rotten or infested with creatures like maggots. Water was a similar problem. It was just plain dirty. As a result of these horrific settings, most, if not all, POWs had an illness like dysentery, beriberi, pellagra, ulcers, pneumonia, or diphtheria. Even with these diseases, prisoners were expected to work, or they would receive half their already meager food rations for the day. At work, if prisoners rested for a moment, made a mistake, or looked at a camp official the wrong way, they would be viciously beaten. If they weren’t working, the camp officials would still beat the prisoners just because they could. Sometimes, these beatings resulted in death.

Zamperini worked on the dreaded B-24, a plane famous for its death rate. A lot of times, pilots would be cleared to fly, even though their plane was faulty, unsteady, or unable to fly. The flight that led to Zamperini ultimately being captured was initially a rescue mission itself. The plane the men took to search for a flight that never landed had technically passed inspection, but the airmen all dreading flying this particular plane. I learned that American missions were sent out consistently because a certain number of missions had to be met, though it wasn’t necessarily safe to fly. Safety wasn’t always the biggest concern. In fact, proper provisions for crashes and emergencies weren’t usually in